"There
are thousands of jobs on the line that would disappear pretty quickly
if the Ex-Im Bank were to disappear. So I told the chairman he needs to
come up with a plan," Boehner told reporters. "Because the risk is that
if he does nothing, the Senate is likely to act. And then what?"

Many
conservative Republicans want to kill the bank outright, saying it
finances too many questionable projects andfavors some businesses over
others.But the bank enjoys sweeping support among Democrats, and other
GOP lawmakers support business groups who say it sustains U.S. jobs.

Boehner's comments raised the possibility
that he would allow the House to vote on a Senate bill if Hensarling's
committee failed pass a plan to change the bank's operations or wind it
down." via Free Rep.

The bank’s data
show that it overwhelmingly benefits some of the biggest, most
politically connected firms in America. In fact, in 2013, 64 percent of the bank’s activitiesbenefited 10 companies, such as Boeing, General Electric, and
Caterpillar. And these companies’ customers aren’t poor either. For
instance, the bank subsidizes wealthy foreign borrowers—like mining
heiress Gina Rinehart, owner of the Ex-Im-financed Roy Hill Iron Ore
Mine and Australia’s richest woman. She could easily find private capital without government privileges. It also subsidizes numerous state-owned companies in wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia and fast-growing airlines (PDF) like Lion Air and Air Emirates.

Maybe more interesting is the fact that the biggest beneficiary on the foreign buyer side
is a company named Pemex. It is a super gigantic Mexican state-owned
petroleum company with a market capitalization of $416 billion. And yet
it has benefited from $7 billion in U.S.-taxpayer-backed financing since
2007. I wonder how Democrats reconcile that handout with their
well-known anti-fossil fuels stance.....

But the biggest beneficiaries of all are probably the lenders
who earn interest on loans whose risk is borne by American taxpayers.
No one explained it better than a JP Morgan banker (whose firm just
happens to be the biggest private lender that benefits from Ex-Im), when
he said that the bank is “free money”—that is, for the firms who know the right people."...
.

The board of the Ex-Im Bank, the United States' export credit agency, voted last December to
stop funding coal plants overseas - except in certain circumstances - in
response to President Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan, which called on U.S. and international lenders to do so.

"We
are currently reviewing the application, which we received last month,
to determine if it satisfies our criteria of 'reasonable assurance of
repayment' and to ensure that it adheres to our environmental and other
policies," an Ex-Im official said....
.Democratic
Senator Joe Manchin from coal state West Virginia plans to offer
compromise legislation to renew the bank's charter by five years on the
condition that it permanently removes the restrictions on lending to
coal projects.

The Ex-Im
Bank in January temporarily suspended enforcement of a lending ban to
high-carbon intensity projects until September due to a provision of a
House appropriations bill that defied the president's climate action
plan.

This opened the window for the India project to apply for an Ex-Im loan guarantee.

The coal project being reviewed by the bank is a 4,000 MW integrated power plant and coal mines located in India's Jharkand state in northeastern India.

It
had initially been proposed by India's government as part of a strategy
to add an additional 100,000 megawatts of generation capacity by 2017.
Residents surrounding the coal mining and power project have protested
against it.

The
supercritical plant, which uses more efficient boilers than traditional
coal-fired power plants, is owned by Reliance Power (RPOL.NS), Tata Power (TTPW.NS) and coal mining company NTPC.

The Ex-Im Bank does not disclose which U.S. vendors have applied for the loan until the loan is approved.

In 2010, the bank agreed to $900 million in loan guarantees from Reliance Power (RPOL.NS) to buy mining equipment from Wisconsin-based Bucyrus, now owned by Caterpillar (CAT.N) to build a power plant in central India."....

Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the Center for International Environmental Law and four other environmental groupssued in July 2013,
claiming that the bank and its Chairman Fred P. Hochberg authorized a
3-year, $100 million loan to Xcoal Energy and Resources from PNC Bank
without conducting environmental analysis required under the National
Environmental Policy Act.

The plaintiffs claimed that the loan deal would
pollute the air and water with toxic coal dust, aggravating respiratory
conditions such as bronchitis and asthma, and that toxic metals in coal
dust from the mines would increase people's risk of cancer and kidney
damage.

They also claimed that small dust particles contribute
to haze, alter the nutrient balance in water bodies, and diminish
ecological diversity.

On
Wednesday, District of Columbia Federal Judge Rudolph Contreras agreed
with the ExIm Bank, and found that the plaintiffs lacked standing to
challenge the loan guarantee. To establish standing in cases
alleging violation of procedural rights, such as NEPA lawsuits, the
plaintiff must demonstrate a specific rather than general interest in
the matter, show that the government's failure to conform to the
procedure at issue will harm the plaintiff's interests, that the
government's failure to act is the cause of the plaintiff's alleged
injuries, and that the court can provide actual rather than speculative
relief, the ruling states. The defendants acknowledged that
members of the four environmental groups suing on behalf of their
members would likely be harmed by pollution from coal exportation, but
argued that the groups lacked standing because they did not prove that
the loan would cause Xcoal to export more coal or that vacating the
guarantee would force Xcoal to export less coal. In rebuttal,
the groups asserted that ExIm's loan enabled Xcoal to export more coal
than it could without the guarantee, and that canceling the guarantee
until the bank completes NEPA analysis would force Xcoal to decrease
coal exports and thus reduce pollution. Contreras was not
persuaded. He found that the administrative record and declarations from
the parties demonstrate no link between ExIm Bank's authorization of
the loan guarantee and the amount of Xcoal's coal exports. Though
the groups' members believed NEPA compliance could better protect them
from the effects of coal pollution, their "hopes or beliefs than an
order rescinding the guarantee would redress their injuries, however
genuine, do not constitute 'specific facts' showing redressability,"
Contreras wrote. In contrast, the defendants supported their
position with specific facts, such as Xcoal's using other lines of
credit to boost its coal exports, to prove that rescinding the guarantee
will accomplish little to protect the plaintiffs' members from
pollution, the ruling states. "The proposition that Xcoal would
export less coal if the court orders the bank to rescind its guarantee
is, at best, entirely conjectural in light of the availability of
alternative funds and Xcoal's stated commitment to exporting the same
volume of coal regardless of whether the loan guarantee is rescinded,"
Contreras wrote.Since the four groups cannot refute the
defendants' assertions that the European banking crises is easing up and
that Xcoal is using only 30 percent of its available $535 million in
credit, they lack standing for failure to establish redressabillity,
Contreras added. The Center for International Environmental
Law's and Pacific Environment's claims for organizational standing based
on suffering "injuries to their organizations' missions, activities,
and resources" due to ExIm's guarantee also failed to impress the court
because neither could not show that they suffered actual harm. Both
groups contended that the guarantee interferes with their express
missions to protect the environment, and forced them to expend resources
on environmental advocacy and public education, but neither could back
up those claims with specific facts or explain how allocating additional
funds for advocacy differed from their typical program activities and
costs, according to the ruling.An action that merely frustrates
an organization's goals is not enough to prove actual injury, and
without proof of such injury, the plaintiffs thus lack standing,
Contreras wrote. The court granted the defendants' motion for
summary judgment and denied as moot the plaintiffs' motion to include
extra-record evidence. The plaintiffs were Chesapeake Climate
Action Network, the Center for International Environmental Law, Friends
of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy,
and Pacific Environment."

When explaining their abstention, Treasury officials stated,
"The ESIA does not provide a sufficiently detailed analysis of
associated facilities and cumulative impacts, notably concerning a
coal-fired power plant that will likely be needed to provide reliable
power for the project." Clearly these were trivial matters for Mr.
Hochberg and Exim that should not come between them and a new
destructive coal plant.The sad part is we now know that the situation is much worse. At the
time of the World Bank vote, Rio Tinto was telling officials that a
final decision had not been made on whether or not they would construct a
coal-fired power plant. But in Mongolia, they were already making
preparations on the ground for the plant. In other words, Rio Tinto was
lying in order to get funding from the IFC and the U.S. Government--
and it worked because neither the World Bank nor Exim did the necessary
due diligence to check Rio Tinto’s claims. Did I mention this is your
tax payer dollars at work?

Our partners at Accountability Counsel did check, and it wasn’t that
hard. They traveled to Mongolia and took a tour of the mine with a Rio
Tinto official. Not only did he tell Accountability Counsel that he had
not heard any talk of reconsidering the decision to build the coal-fired
power plant, he pointed out where the worker housing was already under
construction. It is the white line in the distance of this photo provided by Accountability Counsel.

Of course, Hochberg has a longhistory of supporting controversial coal projects
backed by unscrupulous companies, so we’re hardly be surprised. But we
can’t let him, or the US Government off the hook for decisions like
these. It’s clear that abstention votes are not enough. Going forward
Exim and Treasury must vote “no” on fossil fuel projects, especially
dirty coal projects. It’s way past time for the World Bank and the U.S.
Export-Import Bankto get out of the coal business.". -- Nicole Ghio, Sierra Club's International Campaign

But our pleas were callously ignored as President Hochberg ok’d a
massive expansion of coal finance in every corner of the globe. From Kusile in South Africa, to Sasan in India, to Xcoal in the US,
to these proposed mines in Australia, it appears that Ex-Im Bank cares
little for the damage the institution is causing to communities around
the worldnot to mention the reputation of this administration.

Which is why Greenpeace Australia’s recent report on massive coal export expansion plans that would trample the Great
Barrier Reef, and the global climate, was so damning. They found that if
underwritten by institutions like Ex-Im Bank theworld would add
emissions the size of the country of Canada while increasing traffic
through one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. For an excellent
visual representation of this lunacy check out Greenpeace’s short video:.....

So how did President Hochberg react? By quietly talking with another Indian company to finance another mega mine - this time with Adani group, whose record of violations (PDF)
would give most institutions pause. Not Ex-Im though. After all, it
makes sense that being linked to a scandal plagued Indian coal sector
beset by ‘coal-gate’ investigations would be of little consequence if you are willing to finance the destruction of a global treasure like the reef.

But
at the end of the day these may be over eager developers looking to
increase the perception in the financial community that their projects
have legs. The truth is with prices at near 2 year lows the Australian
mining community is understandably worried that these projects are no longer viable. That is why the vociferous claims from Adani and GVK may be making their way into the press at this opportune moment.

But
if that’s true, it’s easy enough for President Hochberg to condemn
these public statements, and publicly dissociate the bank from this
scandal. Instead he has been silent which leaves a huge question mark
over US involvement. But let’s not put words in anyone’s mouth. Let’s
let President Hochberg speak for himself.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack said
agents patrolling west of the San Ysidro port of entryTuesday morning
found a sinkhole close to the U.S. border fence that opened up into the
tunnel.

The reshuffle was announced by royal decree via state television early on Wednesday. Salman relieved Crown Prince Murqin from his post, which was
reportedly done upon his request. Mohamed bin Nayef, 55, the grandson of
the founder of Saudi Arabia, was appointed as crown prince and also
minister of interior.

Al Jazeera's Mohamed Vall, reporting from Jizan in the country's
south, said the moves represented a major change in Saudi Arabia.

"This is the first time that a grandson of the founder of the country
[Ibn Saud], rather than a son, is appointed crown prince," our
correspondent said.

Faisal "asked to be relieved from his duties due to his health
conditions," said the royal decree published on the official Saudi Press
Agency, adding that he was appointed as an adviser and a special envoy
of King Salman, as well as a supervisor on foreign affairs.

The latest nominations, part of King's Salman second cabinet
reshuffle since he acceded the throne on January 23, come amid increased
tensions between Sunni Saudi Arabia and its regional Shia rival Iran,
following the kingdom's military intervention in neighbouring Yemen.

Jubeir has shone recently as he spoke frequently to reporters in the
United States in defence of his country's decision to form a coalition
launching air strikes on Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.

The downtown of almost any European city is full of impoverished
non-Western immigrants. Yet in ten years, some of those same Middle
Eastern immigrants will demand space for new mosques, while they would
never have allowed a church to be built in their homeland, and many
newcomers will have complaints against their hosts about their own lack
of parity with the established citizenry. Such is the strange effect of
contemporary Westernism upon immigrants.

In other areas, recent war and revolution are just the latest
chapters in an old book of endemic poverty, high birthrates, and failed
governments that incite their poor to seek entrance by any means
necessary into Europe. The migrants’ assumption is that being a poor
visitor inside Europe is preferable to what they had at home. Someone
with a menial job in Paris or on public assistance in the United Kingdom
feels lucky because of what he knows housing, medical care, public
safety, and nutrition are reduced to in India, Pakistan, Libya, the
Philippines, or Syria. The most zealous Muslim often chooses to live
among Christians, agnostics, and atheists rather than under an Islamic
theocracy at home — even as he sometimes damns his host and praises the
country he will never return to.

Government has abjectly failed in Latin America. These governments are
at most indifferent to their people’s departure, and often encourage
them to leave. Elites callously see multiple advantages in losing their
own people, especially when remittances arrive in the billions of
dollars and provide sustenance for those whom the government cannot or
will not assist..

Given the role of high tech and massive government aid in
redefining Western poverty, the endless argument for ever more massive
expansions of social services becomes more difficult without new
populations of desperate Asian, African, and Latin American poor.
Indigent immigrants ensure statistical imbalances and lead to charges of
Western failures in fairness and equality. To take one example, without
constant illegal immigration, the diverse Latino population in the U.S.
would soon reach parity with the majority population — in the pattern
of the past Italian-American immigration experience. But somehow, if an
Oaxacan immigrant has inadequate access to health care, education, and
legal representation in his first year of unlawful residence in the
United States, he then can become fodder for a blanket indictment of
Western nativism, racism, and xenophobia— and he and his advocates are
acutely aware of that anomaly....

But something apart from its mostly illegal nature is disturbing and
new about immigration to the West today— largely ideology, and
attitudes about assimilation and integration.
Western societies have altered their traditional strength of
introspection and self-criticism into a banal sort of nihilistic
self-hatred. The richer and more leisured Western societies have become,
the less confident they are about the values and history of their own
culture, which has so blessed them. Only the bounties of capitalism
allow one the leeway to damn it. The schizophrenia has reached such an
absurd level that Americans are unable or unwilling to recognize why
they do not wish to live in Mexico, or why millions of Mexicans wish to
live in their country, and the British do not recognize why they do not
emigrate to Pakistan, while millions of Pakistanis wish to live in
Britain.

Westerners accept that these one-way correspondences are true.
Nonetheless, they are incapable of articulating the social, economic,
and political causes for the imbalances,namely the singular customs and
heritage that make the West attractive: free-market capitalism,
property rights, consensual government, human rights, freedom of
expression and religion, separation of church and state, and a secular
tradition of rational inquiry. Much less are they able to remind
immigrants from the non-West that they are taking the drastic step of
forsaking their homelands, often rich in natural resources, because of
endemic statism and corruption, the lack of the rule of law, religious
intolerance, misogyny, tribalism, and racism — the stuff that does not
lead to prosperous, safe, and happy lives..

Still, all this dishonesty puts open-borders advocates in a dilemma.
In theory, any restriction of immigration, any insistence that it be
solely legal, any secure border enforcement is pilloried. But here
follows a disconnect. Why would critics of Western governments’ supposed
insensitivity demand that they extend such insensitivity to the
multicultural “other”? To take one American example, why would
ethnic-studies programs on the one hand teach largely the racism and
nativism of America, and the forgotten glories of indigenous
civilizations in Mexico, while on the other hand politicizing our
immigration policies as largely a racist attempt to keep people of color
out? Is the U.S. then toxic or attractive? Is it because Mexico is so
wonderful that millions choose to leave it?.

Or, in longer-range terms,
why would Mexican nationals emigrate and wish to stay unassimilated,
only to replicate the Mexico they have forsaken? One of the most
disturbing aspects of the promotion of illegal immigration is the
left-wing advocate’s visible anger at the U.S. — as if to say, “Millions
from superior non-Western societies have a right to live in an
unattractive West.”".

Immigration to the West will remain a moral and intellectual
embarrassment until Westerners insistthat newcomers arrive in numbers
that can be assimilated, that they meet meritocratic criteria that are
ethnically blind, and that they come legally and on the terms
adjudicated by the host. Europeans and Americans need not be
chauvinistic, but they do need to be candid about why people leave one
country for another. From such knowledge comes realization that the best
way to stop mass, illegal immigration is for other societies to emulate
Western paradigms so that there is no need to emigrate — after all,
Japanese and Singaporeans do not hide in cargo boats to reach
California. .

"The past week was a very good one for Ted Cruz in South Carolina, as
he swept the straw polls at four bi-annual Republican county
conventions, and one county GOP Executive Committee bi-monthly meeting.

And finally, late last week came the Dorchester county GOP Executive
Committee straw poll: Cruz 30%, Walker 25%, Carson 16%, Rubio 11%, Paul
7%, Graham 4%, Santorum 2%, Kasich 2%Greenville and Spartanburg are by far the two largest and most
populated GOP voting counties in the state and count for more than 20%
of the total GOP primary vote.The two counties accounted for nearly
half of Governor Haley’s 2010 general election net votes.

3. Jeb Bush did not get above 5% of the vote in any of the polls, and in Dorchester and Aiken he received zero votes.

4. Similar to Jeb Bush, Rand Paul scored very low in all polls, especially in Greenville 3%, and Anderson 1%.

Steven Wright, a conservative activist from Dorchester was a
voting member in Dorchester’s straw poll. Wright said that he is
excited to be helping with the grassroots effort for the Ted Cruz
campaign. “The American people are ready for a leader that does what he
promises. Senator Cruz has been an active fighter for freedom and
limited government in the U.S Senate. I see a large amount of grassroots
support here in the Low Country for Senator Cruz. The grassroots are
ready to take our country back and we see Senator Cruz as the only
candidate in the race who will do that.” Wright said.

“The first amendment has been taken for granted by both parties until
now. It is a bigger issue this time now for evangelicals than even the
life issue is,” Deace insisted. “If you don’t have the freedom to live
out your faith in public as an American citizen under the Bill of
Rights, your opinion on other matters is actually irrelevant.”

Voted one of the top 100 talk-show hosts in America, according to Talkers Magazine,
Deace explained that the left’s goal is to “marginalize the Republican
base, drive them underground so that they can’t take a stand on other
issues of a conservative magnitude.” Deace thinks that most Republican
candidates don’t fully recognize this strategy, with the exception of
Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, and Texas senator Ted Cruz.

Moreover, Deace told Boyle that he is not convinced that all
establishment Republicans are “all in” with Jeb Bush. He pointed out
that Marco Rubio “is making a play for some of Jeb’s establishment
support.” With the addition of Ohio Governor John Kasich and Michigan
governor Rick Snyder gaining establishment support, Deace contends that
the word is getting out among GOP insiders that Jeb Bush is no longer
the “establishment standard-bearer” that he once was." Free Rep.

"You know George Soros.
He’s the investor’s investor—the man who still holds the record for
making more money in a single day’s trading than anyone. He pocketed
$1 billion betting against the British pound on “Black Wednesday” in
1992, when sterling lost 20 percent of its value in less than 24 hours
and crashed out of the European exchange-rate mechanism. No wonder Brits
call him, with a mix of awe and annoyance, “the man who broke the Bank
of England.”...Occupy Wall Street “is an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of
protest,” but it will grow. It has “put on the agenda issues that the
institutional left has failed to put on the agenda for a quarter of a
century.” [Soros says]...(parag. 16)As anger rises, riots on the streets of American citiesare inevitable.

"The son of Peter Angelos, the Baltimore Orioles’ owner, expressed
frustration that the message sent by protests over the death of Freddie
Gray was overwhelmed by the temporary lockdown of Camden Yards during
the Orioles’ game Saturday night.

"Brett,
speaking only for myself, I agree with your point that the principle of
peaceful, non-violent protest and the observance of the rule of law is
of utmost importance in any society. MLK, Gandhi, Mandela and all great
opposition leaders throughout history have always preached this precept.
Further, it is critical that in any democracy, investigation must be
completed and due process must be honored before any government or
police members are judged responsible.

The innocent working families of
all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive
violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by
government pay the true price, and ultimate price, and one that far
exceeds the importances of any kids’ game played tonight, or ever, at
Camden Yards. We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying
around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden
Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and
everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal
rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light
of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary
Americans.""

This
is the very same bigotry of low expectations that we have come to
expect from liberals – lower standards for women and minorities simply
because they are women and minorities. Marco Rubio didn't have to come
out in favor of amnesty because he was Hispanic; Ted Cruz is Hispanic,
and he didn't feel compelled to come out in favor of amnesty.Despite
his Hispanic background, Cruz found a better answer: following the law.

The
one thing about Rubio, whether you disagree with him on what he did
with amnesty and then walked it back or not, he does not have a
likability problem. He is instantly likable. He's motivational. He's
inspirational in a Reaganesque way

Listen,
I get it. He's young, he's handsome, he reminds people more of Ricky
Martin than Cheech and Chong. But pushing leaders to the forefront
simply because they happen to be Republican and they happen to be from a
minority is the wrong policy.

"...Marco
Rubio is a serious man, he has a serious message, and he has a very unmistakable joy in spreading that message, in informing people. He
knows how to deliver it. He knows how to deliver it live. He doesn't
have to announce on Twitter. He doesn't have to announce with a series
of posts on social media. He can do it live in front of real people
with a real camera. And he's an emotional speaker. In fact, at some
point last night, a couple of points it looked to me like he almost
might tear up. Now, I know Rubio has lost a lot of luster with
some people on the Tea Party side because of his flirtation with the
Chuck-U Schumer gang on amnesty and immigration. You can maybe chalk it
up to two things. Chalk it up to novice naivete, trying to get his
feet wet and establish himself within the power circles of the Senate. Or another explanation for it could have been that, given his Hispanic
heritage, he almost had to, in the sense of identity politics, if he had
any chance at all of securing any votes from that sector, he had to
come out in favor of it.But whatever, he's walked it back now, and
we'll just see how this is all gonna play out with Tea Party people....The
one thing about Rubio, whether you disagree with him on what he did
with amnesty and then walked it backor not, he does not have a
likability problem. He is instantly likable. He's motivational. He's
inspirational in a Reaganesqueway because he has that family story, and
he relishes telling that story. He thinks it's inspirational. It was
to him, and he wants it to be for everybody. He is a great
communicator, significant communicator, has a conservative message. Just over here he has that misstep on immigration with the Tea Party. Time will tell if that can be overcome. Now, we will see also if his
policies match his rhetoric. His rhetoric is great, his persona is
great, his energy is great. He's a natural leader, it appears, and there
will be a certain number of people who will relish and enjoy making
Rubio their champion."...

"Rubio has signed up
two prominent former Romney officials in recent weeks. Rich Beeson,
Romney’s 2012 national political director, has been tapped as Rubio’s
likely deputy campaign manager, while Jim Merrill, Romney’s longtime New
Hampshire strategist, is on board to play the same role for Rubio."....

Erick Erickson: "As of October 26, 2012, Targeted Victory had been paid $64 million by Team Romney and FLS Connect had been paid $16.5 million. And
now the “L” in FLS Connect, Jeff Larson, will perform the autopsy on
why Election Day and its related operations collapsed. I bet I know which
companies won’t be blamed."

"Ten of the consulting firms that formed the core of the push to elect
Mitt Romney — reaping a combined $1 billion in the process — have
survived a tea party assault and are again among the highest-grossing
and best-positioned players in Republican politics.

. The firms and their consultants have been paid more than $19.6 million for 2014 campaign work through January,
according to a POLITICO analysis. They’ve also cemented relationships
with some of the GOP’s rising stars, setting up the firms for even
bigger paydays headed into the fall, when costly advertising and mail
campaigns begin, and for a 2016 presidential campaign expected to be the most expensive in history.

.
The firms of Romney’s digital director Zac Moffattand political
director Rich Beeson— Targeted Victory and FLS Connect, respectively —
as well as the firm that made huge sums buying ads in 2012 for Karl
Rove’s American Crossroads helped establishment favorite Bradley Byrne defeat a tea party primary rival and then a Democrat in a closely watched 2013 Alabama special congressional election.

Targeted Victory, FLS and a handful of other Romney-linked firmsare
also working for Sens. John Cornyn, Mitch McConnelland Marco Rubio;
Rep. Paul Ryan; the Republican National Committee; the National
Republican Congressional Committee; and a variety of
establishment-oriented super PACs like Rove’s American Crossroads, while
FLS and the firm of Romney’s top strategist, Stuart Stevens, helpedNew Jersey Gov. Chris Christie win reelection.“People are either doing good work or they’re not and, if they’re
not, the market will ultimately correct itself,” said Moffatt, whose
firm was paid $112 million in 2012, and has collected $3 million in fees
through January, according to filings with the Federal Election
Commission and the Internal Revenue Service."...============================

The 2012 Romney campaign was a sham from day one. Romney refused to give any of his famous money to the campaign when it desperately needed it, even left the campaign trail when he was needed in the stretch to raise more money:

In fact, four years ago the former governor gave his own campaign nearly $45 million.
He even donated a Winnebago trailer. “I’m not beholden to any
particular group for getting me into this race or for getting me
elected,” ABC News quoted him as saying. “My family, that’s the only one I’m really beholden to — they’re the ones who let their inheritance slip away, dollar by dollar.”

The Romney boys can sleep easy: Their dad’s assets are worth nearly $250 million, according to financial disclosure forms. But he has put only $150,000 into this year’s run, through a joint gift with his wife Ann to a Republican committee last spring.

Romney’s campaign surely could use the money.His summer fundraising was less robust than it appeared,
since much of it was committed to party committees not controlled by
him. His campaign borrowed $20 million as a “bridge” loan to keep ads on
the air before the general election began. Even the super PACs have less on hand now than seemed likely just a few months ago.

His strategist Ed Gillespie bemoaned the time Romney must spend fundraising."...

Democrats have increased their staff expenditures from $30 million to
$56 million -- and they employed an estimated 4,500 workers making more
than $1,500 a month as of mid-October, the latest information available.
Sen. McCain and the Republicans had about 1,100 at that point

The expansion was made possible by Sen. Obama's decision to decline
public financing for his campaign, freeing himself from its spending
caps. Instead he has relied on the legions of supporters who have
already contributed over $600 million.

Sen. McCain is limited to
spending the $84.1 million he accepted from the government after his
September nomination. Sen. Obama is on track to spend more on television
advertising than any candidate in history, likely spending more than
$100 million on ads in October alone."...

.

=====================.

Marco Rubio's pal Rich Beeson was front and center with the good fellas at the 2012 post mortem at the pathetic Bob Dole political monument in Kansas:

Brent Colburn, national communications director for President ObamaKatie Gage, deputy national campaign manager for Governor RomneyJeremy Bird, national field director for President ObamaMarlon Marshall, deputy national field director for President ObamaErin McPike, national political reporter for RealClearPoliticsJames Hohmann, national political reporter for POLITICOJerry Seib, Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street JournalJeff Zeleny, national political correspondent for The New York TimesJoe Lenski, exec. vice president & co-founder of Edison Media ResearchNancy Dwight, 2012 Dole Fellow and Republican strategistFilmed on December 7, 2012 at the Dole Institute of Politics."

The White House doesn’t need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don’t even much like the base.
Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out
their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad
but at least their heart is in the right place.This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic–they “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, “We’re gonna tell the bigots to shut up.” On Fox last weekend he vowed to “push back.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want “mass deportation.” Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are “anti-immigrant” and suggested they suffer from “rage” and “national chauvinism.”

Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens?
And often, though not exclusively, concerned conservatives? It is odd,
but it is of a piece with, or a variation on,